Top 3 Best SMART+ER Goals and Wealth Books of 2022

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The Best Books for a meaningful journey. Good Health and Enduring Wealth Start in the Mind.

To be honest, I hate reading. It’s not that I’m unable to read vs that I find the activity kinetically slow. In 9th grade, I realize that I’m a rare combo learner: auditory, visual and kinetic. I was more in love with the human expression through storytelling and poetry.

It wasn’t until Book Insights Podcast reached out to me to be a guest speaker that I was left wanting. Being a charlatan is an unbecoming trait, too often found in modern society.

I wanted, better yet, needed to read more. Setting S.M.A.R.T goals (Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Related, and Time-bound) which evolved to SMART+ER goals which incorporated an Acid Emergency Savings Strategy and Retirement Planning, hurried me along.

I taped into something a bit primal, the need to prove that I could teach the average person (ultra low net worth) to be a millionaire in less than 20 years.

My wife and I are proving my hypothesis in less than 10. With the help of the podcast and Audible, I’ve read over 10 books in 3 months.

Personal finance books helped me make a breakthrough. They can help you.

While The Good Earth, a Raisin in the Sun and Don Quixote and whatever Jane Eyre is peddling, are great reads; the materials didn’t resonate.

Growing up poor, I needed a better frame work for money. While you can learn personal finance basics—such as how to manage and pay off debt and invest— you need to become smarter with how you handle money going forward. That labor starts in the mind first.

These books can fundamentally help you rewrite your character and take the leap beyond living paycheck to paycheck. Here are the top three goals setting books that will take you to the next level:

Best Vision-Oriented Book: Atomic Habits

Atomic Habits is one of the best wealth books

Your future success rises to the level of your systems. As such, you are the architect of your wealth journey.

Atomic Habits helped me understand how habits are formed and what we can do to build long-lasting chains from cravings to responses. The goal is to achieve a system of rewards at every interval.

The first step on your journey to wealth is to pivot toward the internal work to reach your true potential.

The Book’s Top 6 Ideas

Prepare the night before. Preparation is the key to success and confidence. Even setting aside your workout gear can get you going in the morning.
Real change comes from the compound effects of hundreds of small decisions or habits that over time accumulate to produce remarkable results. Most people think that excellence is derives from one singular moment. Instead, nailing the game winning shot is merely another shot in a series of attempts.
Systems make single processes and habits matter. It’s the systems that we put in alignment with ourselves that makes us successful people or unsuccessful people. It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime transformation. “Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.“
Delay your responses. Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy. Take your time with the simple yes or no response. Resist the urge to over commit to activities that aren’t valuable.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement – it’s the good and bad things that we do each and every day that compound over time to create real change. There is a decision tree that can lead us down a path of even more bad decisions. Each good decision moves us toward a better life. Thus, ever good life can end up being tied to even better decisions.
Unlock your potential from your phone and social media. Distractions can be fun but they keep you trapped into your own comfort. The worse part is that you are merely watching others live out the best part of their lives. Plug back into your own purpose.

Best Strategy Building Book: 12 Week Year

12 Week Year is one of the best wealth books

“Americans continue to struggle with weight and out of shape. Most people know how to get back in shape—eat better, exercise more—they just don’t do it. It’s not a knowledge problem; it’s an execution problem.” Brian Moran, President and Founder of the 12 Week Year

The 12 week year effectively teaches how to better manage your time and achieve your goals. If you have been struggling to create a better plan to follow or daily To-do lists; This book is for you. It helps create a plan that makes it easy to achieve any goal at any level.

This book radically shift the concept of a 12 month year to merely four consecutive 12 weeks in order to squeeze out 400% potential.

The Book’s Top 5 Quotes (for more 12-week Year insights)

The number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle
Intentionality is your secret weapon in your war on mediocrity.
The encouraging news is that, regardless of how you’ve performed in the past or how you are performing currently, you can be great, beginning today, simply by choosing to do the things you know you need to do.
To become fit requires discomfort, to earn a significant income requires discomfort, to become great at anything, requires you to pay the price. …To become great, you must choose to allocate your time to your greatest opportunities. You will have to choose to spend time on the difficult things that create your biggest payoffs. To be great you will need to live with intention. That will require you to be clear on what matters most, and then to have the courage to say no to things that distract you.

Best Self-Reflection Book: Deep Work

Deep work is one of the best wealth books

Highly recommended: if you want to learn how to commit to your financial deep cleaning, this is the best book for the job.

“One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results.”

Deep Work is a guide on how to develop the superpower of deep focus on cognitively-demanding tasks in a distracted world. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. It covers many examples from real-world experiences and actionable items. The results are nothing less than remarkable.

To be above average is relatively simple; you have to start – 90% fail to do that.

Top Four Ideas of the Book Deep Work

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. To quote the Book of Bobba Fett episode 5, “work with the blade not against it.” Regardless of your style, find and schedule time when you can disconnect, creating rules and rituals that allow you to work deeply and improve your ability to concentrate, thus working with the blade
Shallow work is non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style work, often performed while distracted. This is a meaning-less tasks that we do. Although there might be meaning to them, it requires more muscles memory. Block or bundle those task together to yield more potential.
Deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive. Those who become great at anything, merely tap into an unconscious flow state when they are driven by pure will. A quarterback enters the flow state with ever play due to repetition, memory and vision.
Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner. Newport argues that we should be take breaks from focus and rest our brains rather than engaging in random activities which are merely distractions.

Bonus – Best Wealth Building Book: The Automatic Millionaire

The Automatic Millionaire is all about automating your personal finances so you can focus on living life. There are so many solutions through technology that after setting up, you can forget about and grow your wealth.”

Based on this book, I ran the numbers and found that there is a magic number and strategy for automatic millennial millionaires.

The #1 Tip for Becoming Rich: Pay Yourself First. But how do you do that?

At the end of The Automatic Millionaire, Bach provides us a blueprint for becoming an automatic millionaire:

Pay yourself first,
Deposit your paycheck automatically,
Fund your “rainy day” emergency account,
Pour into your dream account,
Knock out high interest credit card debts,
Pay all your monthly bills (on-time or early), and
Give to charity.

The Best Books for your Self-Worth and Net Worth

Whether you’re new to finances or just looking for more financial advice, the top overall personal finance book is “Why Didn’t They Teach Me This In School?” by Cary Siegel. It teaches eight important money lessons you should’ve learned by high school as well as a whopping 99 principles that will help you save, invest, and build your wealth.

Other books that are extremely valuable which I pilfered from Book Insights Podcast: